Roseville woman injured in attempted carjacking

A Roseville woman suffered leg and head injuries Thursday morning when she tried to stop two males from stealing her running, parked vehicle containing her two young children, police said.

The 31-year-old woman was dragged as she held onto her 2009 Jeep Grand Cherokee and one or both her legs were run over at 8:45 a.m. as she tried to thwart the carjacking on Collingwood Street, just south of 11 Mile Road, police said.

Next-door neighbor Jay Taylor said he was in his bedroom and heard noise through his open window.

“I heard a thud, and a car zooming away,” Taylor said. “I didn’t think anything was wrong. I heard her crying, then I looked out and saw her laying in the street.

“She said two black men in a black minivan or SUV had stopped, carjacked, took the car, with her two kids in it.”

Taylor dialed 911 and waited with her for police and her husband to arrive. Patrol cars sped past and went a half mile down the street where the suspects had crashed her Cherokee into a telephone pole just north of Marquette Street, near Huron Park Elementary School. The suspects fled on foot and were picked up by the get-away vehicle.

The two boys, aged 7 and 8, jumped out of the moving vehicle before it crashed and were uninjured, police Chief James Berlin told The Macomb Daily. The older boy grabbed his brother, he said.

“It was good common sense to protect his brother,” Berlin said.

The woman was in pain and couldn’t stand up, Taylor said. “The back of her head had a large lump on it, it was really hurting, and her leg was really hurting,” he said. “I was just trying to keep her calm.”

She was in serious condition in a hospital, police said.

The woman left her children alone in the vehicle parked after she realized she mistakenly had taken her husband’s cellphone, Taylor said. Police said the woman left the Cherokee parked in the driveway but the neighbors said they believe the car was parked in the street in front of Taylor’s adjacent house. She called her husband and told him she was returning to the house so he could retrieve his phone. He had just left the house with a co-worker, according to the next-door neighbor on the other side, David Delmotte.

Delmotte said he talked to the woman’s husband, who moved into the home one to two years ago.

“He said, ‘I can’t believe this happened,’ ” Delmotte said. “He just moved, and he said he moved out of one bad area to come here.”

Delmotte, who lives with his mother, Barbara, said the incident is disconcerting because it’s part of an increasing amount of crime in his formerly quiet neighborhood.

“My mom’s been here 32 years and nothing like this has even happened,” he said. “It’s getting bad around here. It’s just getting bad. A lot of crime happening.”

Delmotte said the woman was going to take her children to school and then work as an “aide” at a hospital.

The two men who took the Jeep and the driver of the second vehicle were described only as young black men.

Anyone who may have witnessed the incident is asked to contact Roseville police at 586-447-4483.